


Euneirophrenia

by not_selfconfrontation



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamscapes, Established Relationship, Halloween, Happy Ending, M/M, One Shot, Self identity is a fiction, Tarot, good ol' fashion bantering, keith and lance can't remember shit, keith pov, klance, spooky dream lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27294628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_selfconfrontation/pseuds/not_selfconfrontation
Summary: Keith and Lance, soulmates who meet each other in the dreamscape, can't figure out how to find each other in reality. They make the best of it.In the real world, Keith always wakes up confused, his dreams forgotten. He's left with a warm, peaceful energy. But he knows that someone, or something, was there. Right? Is it a friendly ghost? A phantom? With Halloween coming ever closer, Keith and the gang try to piece together who or what is haunting his mind.Maybe the answer isn't at cohesive as it seems.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 172





	Euneirophrenia

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, babes. I meant to post this last year but then I didn't finish in time and then i forgot lmao ❤️

Euneirophrenia: The peaceful state of mind after a pleasant dream.

*******

Keith slams into his chair across Shiro at the breakfast table and groans, “I think I’m being haunted.”

Shiro peeks at him over the morning newspaper, glasses sloping down over his scar. “Scooby-doo haunted or real haunted?”

“Funny.” He fights a pout, but it wins anyways. “Real haunted.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s something with my dreams, I think.”

Now Shiro shows the proper amount of brotherly concern. “You haven’t been sleeping well.” It’s a statement. Shiro not-so-subtly nudges a prepared plate of jellied toast and fluffy scrambled eggs in Keith’s direction, which he’s only just realized was waiting in front of him.

He’d been sleeping great, actually. He wakes up rested. Energized. Today was no different. His mind feels cloudless. As if he’d never fallen asleep. He doesn’t dream. Or, if he does, he can’t remember it. But waking feels like a gift. A presence. As if someone had been there and settled it gently, lovingly, in his palms. Peace. 

But as hard as he tries, none of it stays with him. There are vague pieces of it, a puzzle he can’t hope to solve. When he tries to cling to a single thread, to knit it into whatever single presence he knows is there, it slips through. Sweet smoke through his fingers. 

“So it’s probably a friendly ghost,” Shiro says, when Keith tells him some version of this. “Congratulations on your first friend.” 

Shiro flicks his newspaper back up as a shield from the crumpled napkin thrown at him. It bounces off onto a pile of textbooks that are really just expensive furniture, given how little he uses them. He’s not sure which useless textbooks are Shiro’s and which are his. An omen for the rest of the semester.

Another crumpled napkin nails Keith in the forehead and joins its twin on the furniture pile.

“Eat your breakfast,” Shiro says.

*******

  
When Keith dreams, it all crashes back.

This time, he’s standing on a beach. The soft give of sand crusting his feet feels as real as anything, as do the quiet tides that ebb and flow until he’s clean again. The horizon cleaves the sun in two, shrouding the other half in waves. He’s in a pair of board shorts and nothing more. This was probably the last thing he wore to the beach in waking life, but he can’t quite remember. Most times, Lance would already be waiting for him, but it seems tonight, Keith has beaten him here.

When Lance finally does arrive, he’s in a simple tee and shorts. Already soaked through, fabric clinging to his muscles. And honestly, what else could he expect? There’s something about Lance in their dreams that makes him never want to wake up. The way droplets dance off his shoulders. His long legs, toned, bronzey. How he lights up at the sight of Keith waiting here on the shore, swiping chestnut locks away from his forehead. The only thing Keith could want more is to see him in person.

“Hey stranger,” Lance teases, “don’t you know it’s rude to spy on someone’s dream?”

“Technically it’s my dream,” Keith says, smirking. He lets his hands drift down Lance’s back, settling in the contours of his waist. “Since I got here first.” 

Lance pinches his cheek, pretending to glare at him. “And it’ll be the last time you ever do.” He jiggles the captured fat, laughing when Keith bats his hand away. When this first started, they used to wonder if their bodies matched their real ones. For some reason, reflections wouldn’t work here. In the early days, they posed in front of mirrors, but their reflections were bluntly absent. The only complete reference for their bodies was the other’s eyesight.

“Well, if you’ve got abs like a cheese grater in real life, I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Lance had told him. Keith had groaned, laughter muffled in his chest. It was the happy embarrassment of people still new to each other. 

Now, if now could mean anything here, Lance traces the lines of his body like he’s done countless times and rests in the crook of Keith’s shoulder.

“I missed you today.” The words ghost along Keith's throat, and it feels as real as anything in his life. He latches on the feeling, hopes it’ll stick when he wakes. “I mean, I didn’t know what I was missing, but I just...the day is too long.”

“I missed you too.” He presses his lips to the smooth of Lance’s temple, lingering.

“Can I show you something?” 

As if Keith was in the habit of saying no to him.

Lance leads him by the hands, backwards, as if he can’t bear to break the gaze, and walks them slowly into the water.

In the middle of the ocean, his body is truly abstract, a strange escalation to an already nebulous world. The currents erase the lines between himself and the surrounding water, their clasped hands acting as his only guiding point. They’re on the edge of the Bathypelagic zone, according to Lance, a fun fact from his oceanography class at Garrison State. Too deep for surface feeders, but nothing really dangerous either. Nothing prehistoric and unseen by the real world. Not unless they willed it into the dreamscape. Just the ripples of fish and him, Lance. In every dream, he can always see Lance in perfect clarity. 

They settle on a hill near a coral reef, bright crumples of color all around them, toes digging into the silt. “Professor Jamison told us being down here is like carrying a thousand elephants on your back. No human could survive it.”

“That’s cool,” Keith says, smiling.

“Cool?!” Lance flaps his hand in vague indignity, appalled by the use of such a lackluster word.

“Cool.”

“That’s unfathomable! Literally!” Chuckles burst out of him, so satisfied with his own joke, that it becomes a crime against nature not to kiss him. So Keith leans over to fix that, warm and giving.

When he pulls away, there are blobs of light wafting around them, ornaments in the darkness. One of the lights sways closer, revealing itself as a jellyfish. Translucent and ethereal with bioluminescence. The glowing strands of their tentacles cut through the murkiness like strings of Christmas lights.

“They technically don’t live at these depths but, y’know. Dreams and all that.” Lance says.

“Technically doesn’t really matter here, does it?” Keith says and this time Lance kisses him. It was a mercy from whatever mystic forces that put them here that they could still feel each other. His hands, threading through Keith’s hair at his nape, stinging and tingling deliciously, blazing across his shoulders, down his biceps. Skin, smooth from the water and warm where they press and grab for each other. The slide of their mouths, filling and dipping against the other, is its own miracle. 

Sometimes, like right now, there’s an undercurrent of desperation, a product of their limited time. For all that the universe gives them in these dreams, the time was never enough. He swallows the sigh Lance lets into his mouth, chases kisses that are still warm, still yielding, and pretends they won’t wake up.

They separate with a wet-sounding pop that leaves the barest stirring in his gut. The rest of their dream is spent strolling along the silt floor, watching the sediment rise and glitter in the light of jellyfish lanterns. Lance conjures up other kinder versions of the deep sea creatures from his classes, both for the wonder of it and to quiz himself for an exam he has later in the week. Keith has no idea what an ephemeral snailfish is, but he’s already craving the sound of Lance’s voice, knowing it will slip from his mind in a few hours.

Soft currents churn around them, a motion so nice that eventually they mimic it of their own volition, standing their ground and swaying with each other. Another jellyfish floats above them, the light softening the planes of Lance’s face. 

He lets his arms curve around Lance’s waist. Lance leaves a hand on his shoulder, the other toys with the ends of his hairs. They fall into a rhythm, back and forth, without really going anywhere.

Really, the best thing about these dreams is the clarity. The privacy of normal dreams is a lost benefit when you can barely understand what’s happening. It allows for appreciation. Even here on a date, where in reality he might feel nervous or terrible or paranoid that his sweat might waft over, now there is room for nothing but contentment, with Lance solid and lovely against him.

“I’m just as bad at dancing out there as I am in here,” Keith says. “Just so ya know.”

Lance’s laughter vibrates through his jaw. “I guess I’ll see that for myself when I find you, won’t I?”

“Yeah okay,” he scoffs, “When _I_ find _you_ , we’ll do things like this more often.”

They’re skin to skin, heart to heart. Their pulses beat together, in time with their steps. Keith is grabbed by an earth-shattering, soul deep certainty that there is nothing else like them in the world, in dreams or in waking. Nothing at all.

“You promise?” Lance whispers. His eyes take on the light, cerulean and precious.

“Yeah.” Keith tucks Lance impossibly closer, away from a reality where that might not be true. “I promise.”

The jellyfish bob and weave around them. And they just keep going and going and going. They’re still slow dancing on the bottom of the ocean floor when Keith wakes up.

*******

Slowly, slowly, Keith opens his eyes. It’s the same. Peaceful impressions that float around like dust in the morning light. Something about water, maybe? Love. Always love. Trying to hold onto anything more concrete is like trying to hold onto helium. Except for...

He reaches under his mattress to pull out the dream journal. A daily ritual started when it was clear these hauntings wouldn’t stop. Today, he jots down the only detail he can remember, the same detail as always. Blue. Today, it feels like cobalt. The journal is pages and pages of shades; cornflower, azure, robin’s egg. It takes him a while to google the right name.

Whatever shade, it is the only thread he gets, the singular needle that allows him to focus. Through all the distracting loose warmth of the pieces he’s left with, there is always blue. Tugging at him, insistent. 

The journal is not the only plan he has for dealing with this ghost. Or demon. Or spirit. He’s willing to try what he needs to. There’s not much else he has to do. His days run on an uncontrollably smooth clock. Class. Go home, see Shiro. Sleep. Class.

So step one. The psychic’s shop. Here he is, facing the back alley door of the shop, well before his first class of the day. In these early blue hours, the world is eerily familiar, like a nighttime visit to a place you’ve only seen in sunlight. Like looking through backwards binoculars.  
  
When he cracks the door open, a stray breeze sweeps through, shaking the menagerie of hanging crystals and minerals along the walls and ceilings. A wooden sign carved _Occult Crafts: Open 6AM to 5PM_ swings back and forth by the door. While Keith browses, the hardwood floor creaks under his feet. He passes through the bookshelves, skimming over the piles of banal astrology guides, until a glint of light catches his eye. A book bound in leather, satisfying to the touch, looms over the bookend of the shelf. 

_Cosmic Secrets, Truths and Other Writings_ is spelled across the front and side in glittering cursive.

“You may need consultation for that one,” says a voice behind him.

He pivots to a wiry woman standing behind him, so tall that Keith has to look up to meet her gaze. Frizzy white hair is gathered in a tiny bun by her neck. When she speaks again, something tells Keith to pay attention.

“It’s not easy to hear what we’re telling ourselves. I can use that book to help you through your troubles,” she smiles, light glimmering off her teeth. “For a price.”

Keith rolls his eyes. There it is. 

“Thanks, ma’am, but I’ll just keep looking.”

Keith ends up purchasing the book, consultant excluded, and an assortment of weird, occult things that might work. A ouija board. Randomly colorful stones and herbal mixtures. He’ll have to try them all and see. 

The old woman rings him up, wrapping every object in waxy paper and tucking them into a bag. When he cracks open the door, he can see that early light has blossomed into morning. 

“Young man?”

Keith turns to see that she’s already met his gaze. Her smile, calm, ever present. 

“Here.”

She pulls out a tarot deck, weathered but still sparkling with gold leaf design. Shuffles through them, cuts them, shuffles them back together. Knocks on it, as if to let the world know she’s here. Then presents it to him.

“Pick three.”

He might as well.

His first card is upside down, but he can see that it says The World.

“Hm,” she goes. “Incomplete, a lack of unity.”

The next is also upside down. The Moon. 

“Illusions. Misinterpretation.”

The last one. Upside down. The Hermit.

“Loneliness.”

Silence.

“Can I get a do-over?” 

“You can take this piece of advice,” she takes his hand, smiling. “Let your mind pull things together as one, and you will see it all. Don’t force it.” Then she releases him, moving on as if never having touched him at all. He fidgets, the skin of his neck going prickly. Not that he’s uncomfortable. Okay, maybe a little. Just confused that this is the place his life has taken him. To loneliness and misinterpretation, in the middle of a weird back-alley shop.

On that cryptic note, Keith crosses back outside. The sun has risen, and the real world is once again familiar, but different. 

*******

  
Allura yelps when Keith plops himself into the lecture seat next to her, startling only a single immaculate white hair out of place. She’s ready to scold him, perhaps even _chastise_ him, heaven forbid, until she spots the frazzle of his own hair and bloodhound-like sag of his eyes.

“Another haunting from your ghost, I presume,” she teases. 

“Don’t you start.”

“Or what is it this time? A demon from the pits of Calakmul? The spirit of Lizzie Borden?”

Keith shows her the bag of supernatural goodies, to satisfy her curiosity and his peace of mind. “I was up early getting all this shit.”

Allura peers inside, as if an actual ghost awaits her. She pokes it with a single cautious finger. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s just to check for, y’know, a presence or—”

“Or Lizzie Borden?” Shiro says, settling into the seat on Keith’s other side.

“See!” 

“Laugh it up,” Keith grumbles, “There’s seriously something going on with me and it’s not some Scooby-doo shit.” He could still feel it, or him, or whatever it was, when he let his mind drift. Something blue, snagging at him, through all the random bits of dream that escaped him. He just needed to know. 

“Alright, alright,” Shiro says, loading up his laptop as their professor walks in. “I’ll text Adam, and we’ll help you test drive this stuff tomorrow night, how about that?”

When Keith continues to pout, Allura squeezes his arm in comfort. “We haven’t seen you in forever, Keith!” It’s true, he realizes. He hadn’t meant to ghost them. He just...yeah.

“We’ll make a night of it,” she offers. “Plus, I’ll make the pasta you like.”

The lecture starts and the conversation falls to a hush. “Well,” Keith whispers, “If you insist.”

*******

When Keith opens his eyes, he’s already cruising a lone mountainside road. His motorcycle is surprisingly accurate to reality, down to the grip of the plush handles and the red intricate detailing.

“You didn’t tell me you ride a motorcycle,” Lance says behind him, and Keith almost swerves them off the side. Lance’s arms tighten around his middle. 

“ _Jesus_ ,” Lance says, “Now I know why!”

“Sorry,” Keith says, straightening out and slowing down, gentle wind fluttering past them.

“S’okay.” Lance murmurs. He presses a kiss between Keith’s shoulder blades, and lets his mouth rest there. His lips are an impression to Keith’s skin, like a body to a mattress. Just the weight of them is so arresting that he almost misses Lance’s next words.

“So where ya takin’ me, cowboy?” 

“Oh, um, kinda’ thought you might know. I just sorta appeared like this.”

“Huh. Me too.”

To their right, the sun balances on the peak of another mountain, shining down on wild buffalo and tall grass that blows wherever the wind takes it. Just beneath the mountain’s edge, he can see that this road trails into a short grassy cliff overlooking the rest of the valley. 

“Guess the dream decided for us.” Keith mumbles. That was new. There was no sense in trying to remember this new detail, no reason this dream would stick when the others had slipped through his fingers but Keith never had the habit of quitting. 

“This goes on the list too,” Lance says into his back, the drag of his lips around every letter burning like a brand. “You gotta take me out cruisin’ when I find you.” The list that exists in this corner of the universe, just for them, of all things they want to do together and never forget. 

“When _I_ find _you_ ,” Keith says, chuckling, “I’ll take us wherever you want.” With the wind combing gently through their hair and Lance pressing against him, Keith is content to let the road unwind to wherever it takes them. 

The dirt road melts into the grassy landscape of the cliff edge, which, up close, is just a medium-sized hill. As soon as they’re both off the motorcycle, Lance points over Keith’s shoulder, whispering “Holy shit.”

“What?” Keith whips around, then stumbles as Lance elbows him out of the way, cackling and bounding down the lush hillside, dust clouds behind him.

“Nothing,” he shouts back. “Just hope you’re not this slow in the real world!”

Keith bursts. Bursts down the hill, shouting “Oh, fuck off,” as he straight-leg slides his way down into the pastoral valley below. Bursts with affection at the sight of Lance’s back, closely approaching, muscles rippling through that thin blue tee. Bursts into Lance, the two of them colliding, rolling, their screams warming the air.

The end of their inertia leaves them at the bottom, panting and weakly shoving at each other.

“Definitely too slow,” Lance mutters, chuckling.

“I didn’t even—” Keith starts, then retches. “I think I ate a butterfly.” 

They get up, and make their way to the forests bordering the valley, meandering through the spikes of sunlight. The trees loom over them, not intimidating but familiar, like old family members. Lance calls out native plants: milkweed, arrowwood, bergamot, black-eyed susans. 

“How do you remember all this stuff?”

Lance shrugs. “Nature’s just cool like that.”

Keith couldn’t really remember the last time he found anything “just cool like that.” Unless it was his motorcycle. He flounders a bit. Then he remembers.

“I bought some witch stuff.”

“What, like Scooby-Doo?”

“Lance. Please.”

Keith explains his plans, to unlock their minds or open a spiritual pathway or maybe just exorcise this weirdness right out of them.

He watches as Lance chews on this, the doubt creeping into his features. Does Lance, he fears for a moment, not want this? It’s a knee-jerk fear, that old hand of rejection clenching and releasing. A spike of potential reality.

“I think it’s a good plan,” Lance starts. 

“But?”

“What if you erase our souls from existence or something?”

“I’ll realize it before we get that far.”

“Uh huh.”

They come across a patch of blueberry bushes, sparkling with dew. Lance gathers an armful, looking so pastoral that for a second Keith can’t believe that this isn’t their reality. That he won’t find Lance just like this when he wakes up, happily popping blueberries.

“You really think it’ll help us remember?” he asks.

Keith sighs. “I don’t know what else to try.”

Lance leans in close and holds a berry against Keith’s lips. Keith complies, lets his tongue linger and brush against Lance’s thumb. Taste was a muted sense in their dreams, but that wasn’t really the point of it. The look Lance gives him is a spark, decadent like the berries should be. His thumb slips away, but there’s no time to be disappointed before Lance’s lips replace it. The wind rustles through the canopy and the full bloom of the flowers, runs a sweet shiver down his spine.

“Well,” Lance says when they break apart, “I think you’d make a really hot Shaggy.”

“What?”

“‘Cause of the mullet.”

Keith starts walking away, Lance cackling behind him. A twitch of a smile on his face gives him away. But if he hadn’t marched away, maybe he wouldn’t have missed the way Lance’s shoulders slump as his cackling dies down, the way his eyes dim, just a little.

They find their way back to the open valley, alpine goats and buffalo and other majestic four legged beasts roaming and grazing around. Lance tells him about how a better part of his afternoon was spent chasing down Pidge’s prototype battlebot.

“It busted a hole in our wall, Keith! It was Rise of the Machines in there, I’m tellin’ you. She’s lucky our building manager hasn’t had that cataract surgery or we’d be on the streets already.”

“Isn’t your lease coming up soon? At the end of the semester?”

“Oh wow, yeah. I almost forgot,” Lance says, eyebrows shooting up his face. “Wait, how’d you know that?”

“You mentioned it last month, I think.” 

“I can’t believe you remembered that.”

Keith shrugs, and turns his head like something oh so interesting is off in the distance. His neck is flushing, giving him away, and knowing that makes it flush even worse. 

Lance smiles, big and cheesy. “ _Awww_. Look at you.”

“I just don’t want you to die homeless before I find you, that’s all!”

Lance huffs a laugh, but it's different. Strange. It’s enough to make Keith look back, eyes already searching for what could be wrong. The tree branches are still waving like old friends. The valley still stretches out before them, endless and full of vibrant, galloping life. But now Lance looks ahead of them like he can already see what’s coming and whatever he sees isn’t good.

Keith threads his fingers through Lance’s, gives it a little squeeze. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

“What’s wrong?”

Lance’s shoulders slump. A long breath wafts out.

“Sometimes I feel like—” He tries, and starts again. “What’s gonna happen if—” 

The struggle across Lance’s brow tugs on Keith’s heart and he gives Lance’s hand another quick pulse. _I’m here_ , he thinks. _I’m here, I’m here, tell me what’s wrong_. Before he can say it aloud, Lance’s eyes lock onto his, eyes wild.

“Okay, what’s my favorite color?”

“Red.” 

Lance keeps rolling, insistent. “Do you remember how I broke my arm in two places last summer?”

“You and Hunk were trying to learn parkour at the mall.”

Those blue eyes keep searching, searching, searching, as if there’s some other answer in the lines of Keith’s face. “Did you know I peed myself in 2nd grade because I laughed too hard at my teacher’s joke-of-the-day calendar?”

“Uh no, but—”

“Okay, how about-”

“Lance,” Keith huffs, confused. 

“Okay, okay, you ask me something! Anything!”

“Which finger is my favorite?”

“Keith!”

Keith tugs on his sleeve. “Hey, c’mon. What’s wrong?”

“Alright, I just—those weren’t the _best_ questions but—” Lance’s voice quivers, like pollen through the long grass. The sky around them is still as a pond, not a ripple of clouds to be seen.

“When we wake up, I don’t want you to be,” he swallows, “ _misled_ about who I am.”

Lance rubs reflexively at a spot on his shoulder. He knows, from a story a few months back, that this is where he had gotten a small permanent scar from goofing around with Hunk in their dorm room. Keith pulls Lance to him, and lays a kiss on the spot. The tall grass whispers around their legs, almost a pleasant distraction. 

“I know you, Lance.”

Lance stares.

“Hey. I’m serious. I know you and you know me, better than anyone else.” He’s sure of it, more than anything. The certainty beats with each pulse of his heart and he needs Lance to know it too. 

“What if—”

“I love you.” It’s dangerous how much he loves the person in front of him, how it wells up in his throat and demands to see the light of the world. The kind of thing that starts wars, sparks history. “We might not know all the pieces of each other yet, but we’ll learn. I want to learn, because I know I’ll love whatever I don’t know yet.”

Lance slumps forward and Keith is there to catch him, like he always will be, squeezing him close. Lance’s hand is a desperate scrunch in the cloth of his sweater, his head tucked away in Keith’s neck and he hopes, for the millionth time, that they find each other soon.

“My favorite finger is my pinky, by the way”

“Ugh.” Lance squeezes him even harder. “When did you get so sappy and smart? Is that a dream thing?”

They come upon a herd of buffalo doddering in the center of the valley. One of them strays from the group, stares at the two of them with big glassy eyes. Lance says, “How long do you think you could last on one of these?”

“Definitely longer than you.”

“Big words, cowboy!”

They exhaust themselves in competition, holding on for dear life as they race buffalo across the verdant plains, choking on bright laughter until finally Lance slides off with a hard thud to the ground. Keith doesn’t even get the chance to laugh before he’s losing his grip and joining him.

In a blink, the golden afternoon of the dream has melted away, and night has taken its place. Side by side, they stay flat on their backs in the grass to see the stars are literally dancing in the sky. They swirl into radiant shapes, flowers, ancient animals, mesmerizing in their dotted movement. Lance places his lips just below Keith’s ears, whispering “Look at this.” 

With a wave of his hand, the stars begin a new ballet, and settle into the sparkling shape of their names. _Lance + Keith_ in celestial signature across the sky. 

“Who’s the sap now?” Keith says, grin spreading uncontrollably. The two of them learned how to take advantage of their situation rather quickly, because what else would you do with a lucid dream? Sometimes, the novelty of doing whatever you wanted could get boring, just a little. Except Lance. In every dream, Lance always finds a way to surprise him. The one factor he’ll never predict. He’ll never want to. 

Lance rolls through the grass and settles on top Keith, long legs bracketing his hips. He sits on Keith’s lap like he owns it, a dazzling smile on his face. The blue of his eyes turns the starlight into something unnameable, something he won’t find anywhere else in the universe. Keith isn’t surprised that blue is the only thing he’ll remember. There are lots of things he wishes would follow him up to the real world. His laugh. The fluff of his hair. Someday soon, they’ll have it all together, but for now, Lance’s eyes are enough. 

Lance frames Keith’s jaw with his hands like he’s holding a precious artifact.

“Y’know I love you, right?” Lance asks, or maybe pleads. “I need you to know that, for as long as you can remember.” 

“I know,” he whispers. Lance leans down and Keith sits up to meet him halfway. One kiss turns to two, then five. He knows Lance is scared of what might happen next. That one night they’ll dream of nothing and keep dreaming of nothing, never finding each other. There’s a twin fear, festering in the back of Keith’s mind. But when Lance is gasping, hands clenching his biceps, it’s easier to forget.

They get lost in it, in gasped declarations of love and promises for the real world, and it takes a while for them to notice that something has wiped out the stars. Across the sky’s expanse is now a daunting void. If he stares too long, the darkness seems to pulse.

“Umm,” Lance says, squinting up. “Did you do that?”

“Nope. Been kind of distracted.” Lance pinches his side with a chuckle.

They press back to one another, aware of their limited time, and the disappearing stars are dismissed as a fluke. A consequence of dreams and their volatility. 

  
*******

  
Morning light stabs his eyes open. Blue floats around his mind, as fucking usual. Today it’s sapphire. The peace is infected with something else this time, some daunting complexity he can’t place. It follows him for the rest of the morning. He fights against his mind, pulling at some deep well of nothing, empty non-memories. There’s no give. 

By evening, the autumn breeze has picked up, wafting the warm spices from the nearby bakery through the open window of Keith’s apartment. A few golden leaves wander through with it. All of them flutter by the sill, save for one rebellious leaf. It dances across the walls, into the kitchen, finally settling atop the old, wooden ouija board on the table.

“I mean.” Allura says. “If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.”

“You can’t get more Scooby-Doo than ouija board,” Adam says.

“You guys can go back to eating the pasta,” Keith grumbles, flicking the stray leaf away. “This doesn’t really seem like a four person job.”

“What if your ghost possesses you!” Allura says

“How am I gonna tell dad I let you lose your soul on my watch?”

They move right on without much attention to Keith, clearing away the admittedly delicious remains of Allura’s penne vodka, the dishes clattering in the sink.

Keith sinks down in his chair, fiddles with the strange triangular ouija chip. “Maybe I am just crazy,” he sighs. The evidence glares in his face. Waking up with his mind in pieces, softly fragmented with no recourse. 

“You’re not crazy. At the very least, this will give you some peace of mind right?” Allura says, pulling him along to the living room floor. Shiro and Adam follow behind with the ouija board, the four of them settling into the plush carpet. They’ve kicked off their shoes, gathered the extra blankets and pillows into one fuzzy blob of comfort. 

The 15 page instruction pamphlet opens like an accordion, page after page unfolding over themselves as Allura holds it up. A surprising amount of detail for what seems like an easy process. Hold the chip. Ask a question.

Shiro turns off the lights, then sets out a bunch of LED tealight candles. 

“You’re serious?”

“I’m trying to set the mood!”

They all put their fingers to the ouija chip, sliding it across the distressed wood to rest on an empty center space. He has suddenly never felt dumber. “Alright Keith,” Allura says, smiling, “What’s first?”

“This already isn’t going to work,” he groans. 

Adam, ignoring him, says, “If anyone’s out there, can you let us know?”

“We’re friendly!” Allura contributes.

They wait in silence, and are met with more silence, textured by the low rustling of trees just outside.

“If you’re the one haunting my brother, thank you for your service.”

The ouija board does rattle — as it gets caught up in the crossfire of Keith’s kick to Shiro’s knee.

They blunder their way through the rest of the template questions on the guide, but they only get through 3 questions before Keith wonders if he can get his money back. There are other ghostly trinkets in the bag to try anyways. Allura drinks all the moon water, having mistaken it for regular. None of them know the difference. They laugh and marvel at the rest of the novelties. The night passes over them, slowly, warmly, the clock hitting 1 AM. 

Adam is nearly slumped over the coffee table, slowly rubbing opal stones against a sleeping Shiro’s forehead. He gets a bitter shard of envy at their ease around each other, an ease that calls to him. From where he doesn’t know. A phantom limb, like trying to dance without legs, write without arms. 

Keith settles on the couch, flipping through the book. It still glitters as brightly as when he bought it. 

The wind picks up, blasting through the open window with more toasted leaves, spiking goosebumps across his shoulders. The book tips out of Keith’s lap as if pushed. He gets up to draw the window closed and when he returns, the book has fluttered open to a different chapter.

 _Now, we reach upon one of the most anticipated days of the autumn season: October 31. Beyond the average tricks and treats, this day comes with the alignment of Earth, Mars, Neptune and Jupiter. With this positioning, the pieces of anything and everything can come together. The veil is pulled back in all senses. On this day, alignment becomes a force you cannot resist. It cuts through any fog. See what is unseeable, if you have enough trust to do so._

He checks his phone. October 25th. He skims through the rest of the chapters, uninterested, until sleep pulls him under.

*******

It consumes him. That much he’s willing to admit after spending the last few days testing whatever he could. His mornings leave him clouded, more confused than ever.

He tries melatonin, he heard it makes dreams more vivid, but it just makes him sleep past his alarm. Rhythmic meditation takes too long. Sleeping on the other side of the bed, exercising before he sleeps, imported chamomile tea. 

Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing but cloudy fragments of peace, and blue. Today is teal.

  
*******

  
“What makes you _yourself_ , dude?” Lance asks him, legs swinging off the ledge.

“What?” 

The dreams were falling apart. October 31st was in two days. The two of them were sitting on the edge of a balcony, watching pieces of the city glitch in and out of order, infrastructure turning upside down, entire blocks inverting upon themselves. They were barely able to get themselves up here, out of the way. He can’t be sure if this means all that occult stuff worked, or if their time was running out. 

“Like today, in the real world, I was going through all my old high school pictures with my sisters and it was trippy. Like I was looking through a smudged lens. And my mindset in highschool was different too. I recognized it, but I didn’t really get it, not anymore. Does that old Lance still count as me?”

“Hm.” Keith chews on it. Their hands are joined. Keith enjoys the slide of their palms for a brief moment.

“You still remember that mindset, right?” Keith says. “Maybe our memories are what make us?”

Lance stills, their hands stilling with him. Turns those blue eyes on him, dotted with falling sunlight. “What about all the things we don’t remember?” 

They’re both silent for a while. The unfamiliar city has started cutting and pasting from both their memories now. He sees the psychic’s shop, segments of the walls and ceilings separating and coming together, then disappearing completely. A small bookstore cafe taking its place. It looks natural, somehow. This ever-changing form of a city.

“Maybe it’s not just memories,” Keith concedes. “Maybe people aren’t so...cohesive like that.” It seems like the right thing to say, as Lance huddles himself closer. Loose fragments of themselves, scattering like light on an ocean surface, never observable in one total form. But still together.

“How’s the dream cracking going?” He doesn’t mind the change in subject; they both needed it. He knows that Lance is worried, that metaphysical walls are closing in on them. 

“Well. I know ouija boards don’t work, at least. Might as well have played with alphabet soup.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had alphabet soup,” Lance goes. “Gotta add that to the list.”

They squeeze even closer together, smiling. Lance’s body was always warm in their dreams. Soft but firm across his stomach, his thighs. The sun begins to set on their makeshift city, the wind curling around their feet as they swing on the balcony.

“It was fun to spend so much time with Shiro, Adam, and Allura, though. We made a night of it.” He hadn’t really had a night with...anyone, in a while, actually. The peace of just being with people, unconcerned about how to present yourself, how to appear. Just to see, and be seen.

“I’m not sure what you’re gonna try next,” Lance says, sliding his hand across Keith’s stomach the way old couples do. “But at least you get to do it with them.”

They watch until the sun plops below the horizon. The piercing light smolders the outline of every building, dimming and reappearing until they both wake up.

  
*******

  
“Honestly, how are we not doing this every single night.” Shiro garbles, his mouth half stuffed with Allura’s mushroom risotto. The four of them have all convened again in the living room, more for the warmth of each other than any more actual specter-seeking. It’s the night before Halloween. Allura fiddles with the ouija chip, her plate set aside.

“I used to do this stuff with my father all the time,” she says.

“He taught you how to cook?”

“I mean this spooky stuff. In a funny way. He and my uncle Coran used to take me camping up in the mountains. We’d drive all morning through the fog, set up our campsite, and then,” she giggles, “they’d always try to scare me with stuff like this. One of them sneaking up behind me, making weird commotions.” She moans some ghoulish _Ooooh_ sounds, mimicking what must have been their poor attempt at scaring little Allura. It gets them all chuckling. 

“Now whenever I think of my dad, I don’t just think ‘Dad’. Those camping trips are like the first memories to pop into mind.”

They share stories like that, as if this plush carpet were their own campfire, well into the late evening. Shiro heads off to take a quick shower. Adam and Allura consider reheating the risotto.

“I’m gonna take a quick walk around the corner,” Keith yells out, already at the door. He’s feeling restless, in a good way. Re-energized by the presence of people he loves, who let him be quiet around them. Better than he did this morning, he thinks, as he walks down the street. His head throbbing, so piercing that he woke up to a tear streaming down his temple. This morning was steel blue. 

He looks far, far into the distance of the city. In the time just before complete night, where the muted indigo of the sky and the green of the trees came together like dark sea glass. The streets dotted with lamplight and laughter, people enjoying their dinners from the balconies, the sidewalk pavilions. 

It’s so easy to get lost in it, he almost walks past the woman on the bench, half-revealed by the lamps, flitting tarot cards back and forth between her palms, until she shouts at him, “Hey!”

“Hi?”

“You want another reading?”

“Another—” then he recognizes that calm smile, effervescent, the frizzy white of her bun.

He approaches her, but doesn’t sit. “Thanks, but I’m good with the first one.”

“It’s good to keep up the archetypes. Keeps our evolution on track.” Then, Jesus, she yanks him down with the strength of someone much younger, stronger. Is this a dream too? Have they finally leaked into reality, and now he has to live in a world where old ladies just yank him about?

“What the hell are you doing?”

She shuffles the deck in lap, cutting into three piles, shuffles again. Knocks on the deck. Letting the world know that she’s coming in. Then she offers them to him.

“You know the drill.”

He gets a small jolt when he picks the first card. The World. A weird synchronicity. This time, it’s upright.

“Completion.” 

And again, he pulls The Moon. Upright.

“Is this deck rigged or something?”

She wacks his hand with the deck, as if she is his grandmother and she caught him with the cookie jar. “Do I look like a grifter to you?” He declines to answer. “This one is intuition, unconsciousness.” 

The last one is new, pulled upright, and she smirks at him as if this proves her legitimacy. 

“The Lovers. It means unity, choice, love.”

Something slows in his gut, like someone drawing a hand across his stomach, the way someone might touch their partner as they slide back into bed during the night. The way old couples do. The two of them sit there for a while, Keith staring into the far distance as he tries to grab on to the mushy loose pieces of his dreams. They come at him again now, raindrops against his senses, but again the larger picture escapes him.

“Why,” he starts, then coughs. “Why can’t I remember what’s in my dreams. Or who. Or...I don’t know.” He swallows. 

“Alignment tells us so many things, young man.” She’s looking up at the moon, bright and gorged in the sky.

“Let me tell you this. Our identities are fictions. The idea of one cohesive person is a fiction. Whoever you’re trying to remember, stop focusing on a single image, on the fiction of your dreams.”

His temple starts pulsing, the back of his head raging.

“Instead, remember the things you do together.”

_Jellyfish, tentacles wavering, a motorcycle across the mountaintops._

“Remember the things you tell each other."

_Broken arms, robots. Red._

“Remember how you feel when you’re with them.”

_Warm, secure. Seen._

“That’s what people are, that’s what relationships are, at their core. Not just with our lovers, but with our friends, our family, the people we spend time with. What we do, what we say, how we feel. Let those things come together.” 

Every shade of blue surges upon him, an oceanic coalescence of pieces, becoming more concrete as he stops resisting their divided nature. More and more and more. Not quite completing a puzzle, but more concrete than ever. He knows that there is a name, that someone is there with him, but he can’t grasp it yet. That’s okay. He can wait. 

It’s like the way our brain takes letters, pieces of the alphabet, and fuses them into one word. Of course the word, greater than the sum of its parts, becomes important in itself. The best way to easily understand something. But the parts matter too. Sometimes, they matter even more.

He thanks the woman, but she waves him off. She sits there, idlying shuffling the deck, smiling at the people in the street with their dinners. He heads off, back to the ones he loves, and the stories they tell.

*******

  
That night, their last dream together is indescribable. Nightmarish. Different landscapes, beaches and valleys, blurring and crashing. Mountains balancing on top of each other. Patches of sand bleeds into flatland. The grass underneath him feels fake, cold. Thunder above him. Lightning strikes around the world in slow-mo jabs. The sound is so jarring Keith almost doesn’t hear him.

“Keith!”

He watches Lance run forward, clarity in all the chaos around them. This might be what miracles are. They grab for each other, holding on to whatever they can. The storm heightens and falls in waves, between torrential forces and drizzles. They wait through it. Neither of them let go. 

“Look at me.” Lance’s hand drag shivers down his back. Blue eyes look at him and for a terrifying, heart-shattering second, he considers that this may be the last time he sees them. “I honestly thought we’d have more time.”

“Lance, I—” 

“Keith.” His mouth clicks shut. Lance’s tone is non-negotiable .“I don’t know what else we can do here. Whatever this is, whatever you remember,” a sad little sound pours from his throat. “I love you. More than fucking anything.”

Lance squeezes him closer, as the world bursts around them, all Keith can think about is time, time, just another chance to do something together, he’d give anything for just a couple more—

 _Oh_. It hits him like a bell. A sharpness he can feel to his bones. 

“Hey,” Keith whispers into his temple, punctuating it with a kiss. The winds sweep over them with rage.

“Yeah?” 

“Which one was your favorite?”

Lance pauses. Even in this glitching, psychotic mess, he feels firm against Keith’s chest, his fingers warm as they scritch through Keith’s hair.

“The fourth dream,” he decides, laughing, clear as a bell. “With the museum, when we didn’t know all the rules, and we tried all that stuff with the mirrors.” 

They had rebuilt the Met, grander than the real one, every surface seemingly too dignified to even touch. The two of them ran through it like it was an amusement park. Putting themselves into the paintings. Squeezing each other’s hands as they walked down the larger-than-life hallways. Everything felt more possible than ever.

Lance brought Keith out of his shell, too absurd and charismatic for Keith to stay grumpy and confused about their situation. There was this display of mirrors, ornately framed, supposedly used by the first king of England.

“I guess mirrors don’t work in dreams?” Keith had said. “I’m not sure if I actually look like me.”

“Well,” Lance had said, flittering a hand across Keith’s stomach. “If you’ve got abs like a cheese grater in real life, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” 

“Shut up,” Keith groaned, shoving at him without real effort, his chuckles giving him away.

“Yeah, okay. For real though. When we see each other in real life, we should come to the real Met.” Lance grinned, his face bright. “Tear through the place for real.”

And now, as rain begins to bite at their skin, the ground has transformed to the sleek linoleum tiles of the Met, smooth under their feet even as the storm swirls around them. Lance rests his forehead against Keith’s, his features beaming just as beautifully. Not a trace of fear left.

“Just focus on that,” Keith whispers. “That’s real, this is real, we’re real.”

“Y’know, I think our list got so long, I’ve kinda forgotten some of the things we were gonna do.” Lance murmurs. “Remind me?”

“Oh, what? Like the balloon battle thing?”

They go on, laughing and stuffing all their dreams into this one last moment. Instead of resisting, each piece comes together to mean something new. With each memory, each foolish joke, each secret that they turn over and over as if brand new, something shifts. A wakefulness so goddamn clear that it can’t be anything else. He knows Lance feels it too, blue eyes looking at him like he’s never seen Keith before.

All of the deserts and mountains start blacking out, a void that cinches closer and closer. The wind is an unbelievable pressure. The tiled ground falls away like snow, leaving them to float in this strange anti-space. Lance still feels so solid in his arm, but his image begins to fade.

“Lance,” he calls out over the gales, laughing in disbelief, because this is actually it, “You live in those student apartment complexes right? By Garrison State University.” 

Hope sparks in the crease of Lance’s eyes, leaks into his voice as he shouts, “Yeah, yes, yes, the apartment on the corner, with the purple awning!” 

The void crunches, and crunches again, until suddenly, the storm, Lance, everything is gone. It’s black. His senses are a scramble. Everything is and isn’t. 

Before Keith is yanked into waking, the dream gives him one last echo: “I love you.”

*******

Keith shoots up in a cold sweat, gasping and clutching his sheets in a fierce grip. His fingers tremble. His alarm blinks 3:00AM in mockingly bright green light. Keith takes some more reassuring gulps of air, telling himself that he’s here, in his apartment, that everyone is just down the hall. Then, he’s scrambling for his dream journal, closes his eyes and just writes. _Lance. Garrison State. I love you._

“Lance,” he whispers into the dark. “Lance, Lance.” It’s sweet, natural on his tongue, a cure for this cosmically brutal tip-of-the-tongue feeling. A prayer of relief, of tenderness.

And then he’s running. A pair of jeans shoved hastily onto his legs, his bike keys grabbed from the kitchen counter, shooting past the couch where Allura is sleeping soundly, the ouija chip cuddled loosely in her hand. When he checks his phone, Garrison State University is only 35 minutes away. Just a couple miles, all this time. He’s too out of breath to shout at the irony of it.

Above him, the Halloween sky expands in its glowing darkness. not a cloud in the sight.

He starts his bike, shoots off into the night, and suddenly, everything just _feels_ , as if his senses are heightened, tuned into everything around him. His bike handles feel cold, and the wind against his cheeks feel sharp and the sense-memory of Lance's lips against his feels soft, and warm, and irrefusable.

*******

  
Garrison State is pretty tight-knit for a state university. It only takes him a couple minutes to find the long block of student apartments, situated on an inclined street that seems to go up forever. Jack-o-lanterns decorates every window and doorstep. He starts from the bottom.

The problem: As he looks up the hill, squinting, every single building has purple awnings.

The street is an empty, silent graveyard, save for Keith’s footsteps as he races to each building, shaking each locked entrance door. Shouting Lance’s name like it’s the first word he ever learned. Now he stands under his fifth purple awning. Why didn’t he ask for a building number? Or memorize his phone number? Or—

“Hey!” 

At the seventh building up ahead is a long shape of a man, running towards him in nothing but red polka dot pajama pants and a tank top. Chestnut locks fluffing themselves with every bound. Smooth skin, bronzy even in the dark of night.

“You—” Keith swallows, and then Lance is throwing himself into his arms, melting them together into one shape. Lance’s warmth is real, his firmness, the tremors of their bodies as they sink back into the grassy lawn. 

All around them the world is slumbering, unaware of what is happening, what will happen. He can’t imagine falling asleep, not when reality has become better than any dream. 

“You’re here, I found you,” Lance whispers into his skin, like he’s pleading the universe not to trick them.

“Um,” Keith pulls back just a few millimeters, thick eyebrows raised. “Who found who, exactly?”

“Oh, like I didn’t just catch you loitering under this awning like you’ve never seen a building before!”

“You said purple! These are all purple!”

Keith stares into his eyes, so happy to see they’re just as blue as their dreams, a kaleidoscope of every shade ever possible, that all he can do is burst out laughing. Then they’re both cackling, two souls meshing together on a scratchy lawn in the early hours of Halloween. On Lance’s bare shoulder, Keith can see the tiny flat scar, exactly as it looked before.

When they finally calm down, Keith sits up, Lance shifting into his lap. Behind him a single star appears, a cosmic wink.

“So what do you want to do first,” Keith says.

Lance answers with his fingers knotting through the thick of his hair, lips sliding against his. He _tastes_ , something rich like aged wine, flavors that he’d been denied for too long. Their hearts, pulsing together, lilting along to the same tune: _I'm here, I'm here, I'm here_.

“Just this, for now,” Lance whispers into the heat of their bubble. “This is enough.”

Lance and Keith. Keith and Lance. The sun shines yellow and the grass is green. It was just that simple. It felt like the two of them had become entwined with the natural state of the world. In a million years, when the oceans rose and fell over the land and nature began anew; the grass would find its green, the sun would learn to shine and when humans began to crawl out of the new-primordial ooze, eventually, Lance and Keith would find each other too.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> we're all just bundles of feelings and actions and love ❤️❤️enjoy the end of spooky month, thank you so much for reading this one-shot! leave a comment if you'd like, i appreciate every single one! 
> 
> If you like this fic, i've got some other works up as well, check em out!  
> [TWITTER](https://twitter.com/notself_)  
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